Arrington writes that the tool he created was consistent with YouTube’s terms of service:

We created the tool only after a careful review of YouTube’s Terms of Use, which state If you download or print a copy of the Content for personal use, you must retain all copyright and other proprietary notices contained therein. The letter, however, states The YouTube’s Terms of Use also allows users to access videos only through the functionality of the YouTube website via streaming on the Web, and it disallows the functionality of downloading videos. Not only am I unable to find that language in YouTube’s Terms of Use, it directly conflicts with the language I did find and quoted above.

YouTube, of course, is now owned by Google (GOOG); this sounds like their attempt to make the site safe for mainstream media content.

The letter, from an attorney at Wilson Sonsini, and posted on TechCrunch, says that “Making unauthorized copies of videos constitutes copyright infringement of our user’s videos.” The nut of the issue seems to be this: “Due to TechCrunch’s video download tool, content creators and owners are less likely to upload or otherwise license content to YouTube due to their fear that the content can and will be copied and downloaded against their will.”

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